I’ve been a terrible blogger lately . . .

Been spending most of my time in the garden, doing a lot of cleaning around the house and driving back and forth to baseball practices and games. The new storm door is up and so is the new vinyl fence! The house is spic and span and we’re ready for a party!

My older son is turning 21 so we decided to throw him a party and invited the whole family. We haven’t done one of those for quite a number of years so we thought that being a significant one, he deserved it. He’s been studying really hard and will be done with finals tomorrow. I’m sure he’s looking forward to start his summer vacation too!

I haven’t done much creating of late. I did my monthly SNL kit that was a bit of a challenge for me this time. The theme is Art Journaling and the color palette was beautiful, but I seemed to have a hard time thinking of things to put in the kit and putting elements together. All in all, I think it turned out pretty cute!

I bought some new little decorative bird houses at Michael’s that I found in the $1 bin. I did manage to prime them but I have to pick a day to paint them. It seems my color scheme in the garden is turning more towards yellow, white and blue with touches of red here and there. I have a red Astilbe which is just starting to send up some shoots, but the red clematis didn’t make it through the winter. The red chrysanthemum I bought a couple of years ago has sent up new shoots so now I have about 5 of those. I’ll probably also sow some red Nicotina.

My white azalea started to bloom this past week too and looks beautiful!

I’m sure I’ll post more pictures of the garden in the weeks to come.

It’s Blackhawks fever over here at my house! With Chicago’s 5-1 victory over Vancouver last night . . . . we’re advancing to the final 4 and anxiously awaiting word on when the series against San Jose will start.

Hope to be back again soon.

Until then . . . Go Blackhawks! (and Happy Gardening and Creating too!)

Arriving from Singapore!

I got my OWOH prize of my tatted name from Ellen at Singtatter's Corner! 

What lovely variegated colors she used . . . they're pinks and browns.  Thank you Ellen!  It is beautiful.  She also included some darling little tatted daisy flowers and several stamps from Singapore.  What terrific ephemera to add to my collection as well!

Been pretty busy with everyday stuff around here . . . the little guy had a birthday on Tuesday and I've been running around like crazy from store to store and playing chauffeur today.  I just got finished sewing patches on a leather vest for one of my hubby's friends and I think it's time to call it a day.

We've been having terrific weather here, but they say we might be in for some snow this weekend.  Hopefully it won't be too much and will be mostly rain instead.

Once again the week has flown by . . . hope to be back again soon!

~Connie

Time flies . . .

when you've been spring cleaning.  WOW!  It's been a week since I last posted.  Been busy, Busy, BUSY.  Seems like I haven't got anything done yet I've been too exhausted to stay up to even look at this computer screen.  I was making headway in cleaning, sorting and throwing things out in my studio but today I was in there . . . and it STILL looks like a disaster.  Everyday stuff has kept me busy that I haven't really created anything either, but the weather has been warmer this week and the sun's been out more often and the days are getting longer!  YAY!

After this weekend, (even though baseball will be starting for the little guy) I should be back on track.  The little guy also has a history project due on Monday and he's been very busy writing those reports while I get his photos together and cut all the paper for matting the photos and a time line and titles, etc.  It's really alot of work and if I didn't help him . . . he'd never get it done.  It's coming together nicely though . . .

I just hope this is the last project the teachers have planned for this school year!  On a fun note . . . the kids were having a 50's day at school today and I thought he looked so adorable this morning that I just had to take his picture . . .

What a cool kid!  Brings back some fun fond memories for me too when we would be able to do that for school!

I was able to coffee stain some fabrics and papers today . . . I just haven't taken a picture of that yet.  I hope to use some of those to finish my dragonfly wall hanging . . . which is still sitting on my work table.  I really hope to be able to finish it soon.

Have a terrific weekend, everyone!

~Connie

My favorite Christmas present

My hubby gave me a figurine for Christmas that is just SO precious! It's called Brothers (Forging a bond that lasts a lifetime) and is a Susan Lordi design for Willow Tree. It prefectly represents our two boys and I have it sitting on my desk!

It's just so adorable that I had to share.

We had a bit of a mishap with the computer recently so some of my photos needed to be reinstalled from a backup drive and I still need to reorganized them. Seems I have doubles of certain ones that I already renamed and placed in certain folders . . . so now I have to figure out just exactly which photos are which so it may take some time to reorganize them. I had other pictures of Christmas decorations to share with you, but was only able to find this one so far . . .

Since I'll be taking the decorations down pretty soon I guess I'll just retake photos of all the collections we have . . . Santas . . . angels . . . nutcrackers . . . nativity scenes . . . that is if I remember before I end up putting them all away!

Well, I'm off for now . . . I'm trying my hand at a painting and have been working on it for a couple of days now. I have been taking pictures as I go along so you'll be able to see the progression.

Hope to be back soon!

Until then . . . HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!

Layout using my September SNL kit

I'm so happy with the way my new SNL kit came out. The theme is grunge and the focus was cardboard. After I finished the kit, I knew exactly what photo I wanted to use for a layout. This is my younger son a couple of years back . . .

I'm hoping to be back soon with more freebies, etc., although the next week is gonna be kind of hectic with school starting on Tuesday and all.

Until next time . . .

First Freebie Kit . . .

OK . . . I have the file uploaded now and we're going to see if this works. First I should tell you that the kit is created in 200 ppi and the download size is about 16MB. If this is too large and/or you're having a problem downloading the file, please let me know by leaving a comment. There will be a Terms of Use text file included indicating how the kit can be used . . . please be sure to read it over before using any of the papers or elements in the kit. Here's a preview of the kit:

It's called Little Boy Blue and contains the following papers and elements:

1 blue/brown plaid paper

1 blue grunge paper

1 blue colored pencil paper

1 light blue paper

1 "sons" word art element

1 leather knotted cord

1 knotted plaid ribbon

1 wood frame

1 riveted "boys will be boys" button

1 rivet corner overlay

1 blue sticky note

1 dark blue straight stitch element

You can download it here: LittleBoyBlueKit.zip